THE HUMAN DESIGN FLAW OF MARRIED-WITH-CHILDREN SEX

The human design flaw of married-with-children sex

What with the incredible challenges and upheaval facing humanity these days — wildfires, presidential elections, pandemics, Supreme Court nominations, and rioting in our cities, just to name a few — I felt that it was time for me address what I consider the most confusing, frightening, frustrating, and divisive issue of all: married-with-children sex.

For most people, sex in any form is an enormous enigma. We all want it at some point in our lives, but excluding the paid kind, the process of getting it is fuzzy at best and impossible at worst. Training is entirely on the job, and it’s difficult to know how well your form is and whether or not it needs work. Much like fly-fishing, we know from magazines and movies what sex is supposed to look like, but the actual execution is usually embarrassing, awkward, and often ends up with something getting tangled or stuck.

I’ve got to hand it to Him, God was clever about sex. He knew that it was necessary to keep His human species in existence, so He made sex pleasurable and addictive, like strawberry Now and Later candy. Everyone would want to get involved, either now or later.

Now, far be it from me to second guess the one Almighty God of the Universe, but when my time comes and I hopefully end up in the good place, I will have some a few questions. Like, what’s the point of mosquitoes and poison ivy? How about wisdom teeth, which we seem to be better off without? Was male pattern baldness absolutely necessary?

I’d also have this question regarding sex: I get the reasoning behind making it so fun and addictive, but couldn’t you have kind of evened things out after the procreation part was taken care of? In other words, couldn’t you have installed an “off” switch in us men — more specifically, us married fathers?

I’m thinking this is a fundamental design flaw. You see, before babies, men and women seem to have fairly equitable sex drives. It’s all fun and games, and the fact that marriage makes it perfectly acceptable should, you would think, ramp up the good times even more.

But after that first kid appears on the scene, things change. In their minds, many women (I won’t say all) no longer view themselves as one half of a fun naked-wrestling duo, and they switch over into mommy mode. Any natural, hormonal urges that once manifested into naughty, Cinemax-worthy, late-night behavior suddenly becomes redirected into making sure that this onesy isn’t too snug on the baby’s bottom or that the diaper bag has been fully restocked prior to a five-minute drive to the grocery store.

Now, there’s no question that mommy mode is the correct mode. Being a mother is clearly a demanding gig and requires full-time attention and concentration unless the parents decide to turn their children out into the backyard to be raised by squirrels. I get this. After careful consideration, I have come out against children being raised by squirrels.

But mommy mode can have disastrous side effects. For some, the sheer concept of remaining sexy and desirous becomes distasteful and, perhaps a little inappropriate, regardless of the encouragement and pleadings of their aghast husbands. As their innate mom-o-meter skyrockets, their once-dominant sexy-wife-o-meter plunges. They are clearly mutually exclusive.

But not in the minds and/or the loins of us doofus dads and husbands. Sure, our paternal instincts of family protection, barbecuing, and the execution of a proper Nerf football spiral are ignited, particularly with boy children, but our sex drives tend to remain at dangerous, pre-kid levels. Nothing in our bodies has really changed between the before and the after of that first kid’s arrival. The equipment, after all, doesn’t know that it’s already done its job and is being placed into early retirement.

“What the hell??” the equipment demands, flabbergasted. “I’m at the top of my game! I signed a long-term contract!”

This is the point at which God should’ve installed an on/off switch in men.

I mean, imagine how nice things would be. A Raquel Welch movie would come on, and we’d be entirely unmoved. An unexpected exposure to the Farrah Fawcett poster would stir nothing in us but nostalgia and the urge to watch “Charlie’s Angels” reruns. Saturday mornings in bed with our wives could be comfortably devoted to sleeping late rather than to … well … not sleeping late.

It’s not that our long-suffering wives don’t gamely try to play along. They do their level best, God love ‘em. If the meteorological conditions are exactly correct and the stars are in proper alignment, a wife may actually initiate sex, although this is exceedingly rare in nature. Recent studies have shown that this phenomenon happens at roughly the same frequency as the appearance of Halley’s comet or the complete freezing over of Niagara Falls. And when it does happen, a husband is often so confused and thrown off, he may simply become paralyzed and unable to function at all.

Again, all of this angst could’ve been avoided if God would’ve simply put men and women on the same page, instead of in entirely different books.

The other problem is that not only do men have equipment that functions well past its expiration date, but they also have very healthy egos. Sure, they understand the whole “mommy mode” thing, but they also want to be desirable to their wives, and the idea of sympathy sex is nearly more distasteful than no sex at all. (Mind you, I said “nearly.”) The almost last thing we want is for our wives to play along while secretly hating the process and hoping it will be over as quickly as possible. I mean, nobody is all-the-way OK with that!

So how is this universal and time-honored conundrum to be solved? Is there nothing that can be done, no flashy “Men in Black” pen thing we can use to hypnotize our wives into forgetting that they have given birth to children and make them believe that they’re 22 again and that their husbands are still super hunky and wear size 32 jeans??

Wow, I now realize that I gave way too much thought to that scenario.

Seriously, though, if I had an answer, I would undoubtedly be a very wealthy man by now. I think that the realistic approach is to continue to work hard in providing for our families, do our best to raise and counsel good, caring children, be as romantic as possible as many days of the year as we can to our loving, long-suffering wives, superimpose a hologram of Brad Pitt’s head onto our bodies at bedtime, and hope for the best.